In most parts of the Inland area, the laws governing fireworks are pretty clear; they’re illegal to have and to use.

But police and fire officials are out on July 4, knowing that law is likely to be ignored by some on the holiday. Officials in San Bernardino and Murrieta said there wasn’t a noticeable spike in calls for service related to fireworks from 2015 to 2016, but others say there has been an increase over the years.

Patrol teams from Riverside police and fire departments confiscated more than 700 pounds of fireworks in the city between July 1 and 4, said Fire Investigations Capt. Ray Mendoza. That number isn’t unusually high, but officials would prefer people obey the law instead of losing their fireworks. The tricky part is holding violators accountable.

If someone calls police and says his or her neighbor set off a firework, it’s difficult for police to get to the call right away. By the time they arrive, the whole debacle could be over.

“Once something’s in the air it could be over 100 different houses that it comes from,” said Lt. Rich Lawhead with the San Bernardino Police Department.

Then, there’s deciding who did it. An officer has to be present and see a firework go off for them to cite someone for lighting fireworks, Lawhead said. Even if an officer or firefighter finds the firework still hot from the explosion, and people standing around, a finger has to be pointed and a form has to be signed to get someone cited.

In the city of Riverside, two tree fires started in areas where fireworks were being set off, Mendoza said. Those kind of statistics weren’t readily available for all of Riverside or San Bernardino counties on Wednesday.

Mendoza said fire officials don’t patrol on July 4 hoping to cite folks – they want to educate people who genuinely don’t know they can’t have fireworks.

Police and fire officials patrolled the city and told offenders to hand over their fireworks. If a person didn’t cooperate, they’d get a citation that comes with a $500 fine. Twenty people were cited in Riverside.

For Lynne Pendergrass, that’s not enough. She’s grown frustrated with firecrackers she hears at her neighbor’s house and wants to see harsher punishment for setting them off.

“It literally shakes my house,” she said. “My cats are scared to death (and) the dogs next door they have to lock up.”

The Murrieta Fire Department’s new fire marshal, Jason Briley, wants to implement an administrative citations program that would require anyone caught with fireworks to pay a $1,000 fine. He’d also like to create a task force-type relationship between the police and fire departments to combat firework use in the city.

San Bernardino authorities received 97 calls for service about fireworks on July 4. In 2015, they got 119 – a negligible difference, Lawhead said.

The same can be said for Murrieta, where Briley says calls about fireworks fluctuated between 40 and 47 between 2014 and 2016.

The number of people injured while setting off illegal fireworks is difficult to quantify because if a person is doing something illegal and gets hurt, they don’t always call law enforcement.

But some of the more egregious accidents are released by authorities. A 57-year-old Yucca Valley man was severely injured when a homemade firework exploded July 5, according to a news release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Though the change isn’t dramatic, Briley said he thinks people are getting more brazen about lighting off fireworks, which is why he wants to nip it in the bud.

“Everything that goes up has to come down, and our biggest fear comes down in brush zone,” he said.

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